Secret Service reinvented in down-home country flavor

With all due respect to the star power of North County’s populated body of “electeds,” only one is a natural, as well as a professional, country entertainer.

It’s often said that politics is show business for homely people.

Well, some are just better at the theatrical art form than others. And one, the son of a mobster turned evangelist, is a spellbinder in black jeans and trademark cowboy hat, his political brand burnished by the Secret Service no less.

The other day, I received a short note from Poway Councilman Steve Vaus, the country-western performer who way back in the ’90s was singing about wanting to take his country back. He was making a soundtrack for the Tea Party before the Tea Party was cool.

On stage and in video, Vaus, well-known for his Buck Howdy alter-ego, has celebrated the powerful themes of patriotism, religious faith and worry for an America that’s losing its sense of pride, its rugged self-reliance.

What makes Vaus so unusual, if not unique, in North County is his ability to bring his considerable promotional skill to his grass-roots activism.

OK, let’s get back to the note.

It was nothing really. He wanted to acknowledge that I’d written a column about weeklies, an important issue in Poway since the News Chieftain was part of U-T San Diego’s recent sweeping purchase of eight community weeklies.

To sign off, Vaus remarked on Kaypro, the San Diego-based home computers I’d brought up in the column.

“That took me back,” he said.

In reply, I asked him about his latest brainstorm.

Are shades and earpieces standard issue? I ribbed (lamely).

“You’re on your own for Ray-Bans,” he shot back. “Curly pasta works pretty well for the earpiece.”

Funniest thing I’d read all week.

For those who may have missed it, Vaus recently launched a boatload of volunteers called the Secret Service, linked by text alerts, who pledge to swoop in and fix minor messes that might take days or weeks before city crews or businesses would get around to them.

Vaus told a U-T reporter he got the idea for the Secret Service from texted news alerts.

Why not substitute trash pileups for Filipino typhoons? Why not in a small but serious way take back the country?

Vigilante maintenance, you might call it. The A-Team taking direction from Vaus, not the City in the Country.

Vaus, you’ll remember, was the singing cowboy who four years ago brought his down-home sense of integrity to lead the recall of former Councilwoman Betty Rexford.

Since that grass-roots uprising, Vaus has been elected to the council and built up an email list in the thousands, I’m told. He can energize his base in seconds.

The Secret Service, which had by Friday enlisted some 300 volunteers, is a vivid (and viral) example of Vaus’ entrepreneurial skill at directing action outside of the city bureaucracy.